Common Sense Media Review
By Jennifer Green
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Danger, emotion, drinking in post-apocalypse anime tale.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 12+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Watch
Videos and Photos
Bubble
What's the Story?
BUBBLE turns on a group of young people who lost their families in a catastrophic event five years earlier called the Bubble Fall. Now they live as a makeshift family on a converted coast guard boat and participate in parkour competitions with other similar groups. Their star athlete is Hibiki, a loner with other-worldly parkour abilities. One day when Hibiki falls into the water that has flooded Tokyo since the Bubble Fall, a mysterious figure saves him. Hibiki takes her home and the group adopts her and names her Uta. Uta can't speak and doesn't seem to know basic things, but she and Hibiki connect on a deep level. When Tokyo is threatened with a second Bubble Fall, the group must make sacrifices to save themselves.
Is It Any Good?
This anime film has an emotional story of human connection at its core that helps keep it interesting beyond the nonstop action, some intentionally grating characters, and an apocalyptic setting. Bubble's animators have created a disturbing world where buildings have collapsed, Tokyo has flooded, and random structures float in the air. It's the perfect setting for the orphaned misfits to practice their parkour. Their feats are deliberately far-fetched, and the mutual taunting gets tiresome, but it's nonetheless exciting to watch them leap and twirl in the air. The bubbles are also almost hypnotic in their mysterious beauty.
The traits that make Hibiki unique among his peers are unveiled slowly as his relationship with the enigmatic Uta deepens. The connection between these two special characters is heightened with scenes played in slow motion and long pauses where they stare into each other's spherical eyes, effectively building up to an emotional scene of Uta's disappearance. Viewers can find messages about climate change, war, planetary catastrophes, and eventual renewal, though the archive images spliced in to try to hit these messages home weren't necessary.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the idea put forth in Bubble that "the world cycles through destruction and restoration." How do you interpret this idea? What did the images accompanying the discussion in the film suggest this meant?
Why are spirals so important to Uta? What is Fibonacci's spiral? Where could you find more information?
How did Hibiki's auditory sensitivity shape his life? What did it mean to him to be so sensitive to noise in a big city like Tokyo, and why was Tokyo after the Bubble Fall in some ways an easier place for him to exist?
How does Uta's story offer a new take on the tale of The Little Mermaid?
Movie Details
- On DVD or streaming : April 28, 2022
- Cast : Tasuku Hatanaka , Alice Hirose , Marina Inoue
- Director : Tetsurô Araki
- Inclusion Information : Asian Movie Actor(s) , Female Movie Actor(s)
- Studio : Netflix
- Genre : Anime
- Topics : Fantasy ( Magic ) , Adventures , Friendship
- Run time : 100 minutes
- MPAA rating :
- Last updated : September 29, 2025
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